Three sets of first-time homeowners and other members of the community celebrated on Tuesday the sale of three Elm Street single-family homes constructed in place of a once-crime-ridden tenement garage.
The homes were built with the help of the city and the Twin Cities Community Development Corp. and financed by NeighborWorks Capital, TD Bank and the Fitchburg Redevelopment Authority. They were sold to the new homeowners over the course of the last six months with financing by Workers' Credit Union and Leominster Credit Union.
The first of the homes was sold to Jacob Workman and his girlfriend, Allyssa Lariviere, in August. Workman, 23, originally from Mount Vernon, N.H., came to Fitchburg in 2007 as a student of Fitchburg State University, and now works as a server administrator in the school's IT department. Lariviere, 20, is still a student at the university, studying special education and psychology, and hopes to one day work as a teacher in Fitchburg.
"We came on the first day they had the open house, and I was like, 'Done! I'm not looking anymore,' " Lariviere said.
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